Oh dear Adobe, oh dear. Once more you have managed to get your big stirring spoon out and get all the tech media in a rage about Apple, and guess what – this time they didn’t even do anything wrong! Following the recent launch of Mac OSX 10.7 Lion, Adobe claimed that Apple had removed support for hardware acceleration from their operating system – making Flash appear to perform less effectively than it had done under 10.6 Snow Leopard. The media jumped on the accusation, always keen to get an attack going on Apple.
Shortly after, the following post appeared on the Adobe Flash Player Team Blog.
“We saw that there were some questions today related to Flash Player 10.3 support for Mac OS X Lion (10.7) related to hardware video acceleration. To avoid any more confusion, we wanted to clarify:
The final release of Mac OS X Lion (10.7) provides the same support for Flash hardware video acceleration as Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). The previous “Known Issue” described in a tech note suggesting that video hardware acceleration was disabled in Lion was incorrect and based on tests with a pre-release version of Mac OS X Lion that related to only one particular Mac GPU configuration. We continue to work closely with Apple to provide Flash Player users with a high quality experience on Mac computers.”
Sounds like a lot of fuss about nothing to me, as usual.
Quick tip for the day: “How do I force eject a DVD or CD from a slot loading drive on a MacBook or MacBook Pro?”
This one is really simple once you know it, but not at all obvious if you don’t. If you can’t eject the disc from your drive, don’t panic! Just restart the machine and hold down the trackpad, after a few seconds you should hear the noise that will slow your heart rate and reduce your panic. The disc should eject all by itself without the need for any tools, sweating or swearing.
The official guidelines from Apple are as follows:
- If the drive ejects discs slowly or appears to be struggling, insert and eject a single disc several times.
- If the drive does not eject discs using the F12 or eject key on the keyboard.
- If the disc will not eject try dragging the disc icon to the trash.
- If the disc will still not eject, holding down the trackpad or mouse button after restarting the computer should also eject a disc.
- If the disc continues not to eject, reset the Power Manager (PMU) or System Management Controller (SMC) and try steps 1-4 again.
Enjoy 
So here’s the thing … I was until very recently a big time Facebook addict. I am useless at staying in touch with people and frequently get so into whatever project I am working on at the time that I completely forget to communicate with humans other than the ones I physically run into in the course of a day. Since 2006, Facebook has been solving this problem for me, and it has done a pretty good job.
I keep my friends list quite short (about 200) and by being reminded that people exist outside of my immediate vicinity I am able to at least keep up the illusion that I am a real human being and can function properly in life, without being constantly reminded to call / email / text message my friends and family. Read More
Ever since July 2008 and the launch of the Apple App store, the world of mobile internet has been in a constant state of change. Up until this point, Steve Jobs and the rest of the Apple marketing machine had been all about providing the best possible mobile browser, and the best mobile websites. They even had a page on the main Apple website promoting pages that worked the best in the fledgling iPhone OS (now iOS) browser. Following the launch of the App Store, the focus of mobile internet has changed, moving steadily away from in-browser experiences and edging ever closer to a world where apps are king.
With the ever-growing popularity of Android, and the diverse range of other platforms available – including HP (Palm) WebOS, Blackberry OS, Samsung Bada, HTC Brew and Windows Phone 7, Nokia MeeGo and Symbian – many businesses are left with a choice:
- Do we produce an app for every platform? At a huge cost and long timeline, this option isn’t available to all businesses.
- Do we pick one platform and hope our target market finds us? Risky again, if you get it wrong then you need to start again.
Luckily there is another option. Whilst many developers have been moving towards the ‘app model’, there has also been a great deal of innovation in the ‘mobile browser’ space, and with the emergence of jQuery mobile, developers now have a real alternative to developing custom apps for each platform. Read More
‘Mining the Social Web’ by Matthew Russell provides an interesting introduction into the world of data analysis using Python. There are many examples for mining many of the most popular social networks and plenty of in-depth instructions to ensure that even those with a basic understanding of programming should be able to get up and running fairly quickly. The book begins with an explanation of how to best set up the Python development tools, and then launches into tactics for the harvesting and in-depth analysis of data, generated by using social web APIs, Python tools, GitHub, HTML5, and JavaScript.
Of particular interest to myself was the chapter on Twitter, which I found to be an excellent starting point for my current research into use of the ever-growing social network. The tools provided by the book gave me with the foundation I required to move on and prepare my own analysis of the current usage trends for Twitter, and to generate usable data sets that could be visualised in an interesting and engaging fashion – providing added value to clients, particularly when analysing the content of tweets, and the patterns in relationships between users and client accounts. Read More
